DEAR SAGE: I happen to have the privilege of knowing you personally (which is why I didn’t include my email) and I want to tell those that don’t know you that you are the real deal! I’ve never known anyone to have such a consistent positive attitude (and be no-nonsense when needed) and somehow know – Read More –
This morning I reflect on a previously posted quote from Meister Eckhart, “If ‘thank you’ is the only prayer you say, that will be enough.” I’m so thankful and I feel that giving thanks to the Creator is enough for me today :) Wishing you peace and blessings….love and light on this beautiful day! Photo – Read More –
Rumi’s Sufi teachings focus on developing control. Consider this teaching: “Words , in themselves, are of no importance. You treat a visitor well, and speak a few kind words to him. He is happy. But if you treat another man to a few words of abuse, he will be hurt. Can a few words really mean happiness or – Read More –
A certain king believed that what he had been taught, and what he believed, was right. In many ways he was a just man, but he was one whose ideas were limited.
One day he said to his three daughters, “All that I have is yours, or will be yours. Through me you obtained your life. It is my will which determines your future, and hence determines your fate.”
Dutifully, and quite persuaded of the truth of this, two of the girls agreed. The third daughter, however, said, “Although my position demands that I be obedient to the laws, I cannot believe that my fate must always be determined by your opinions.”
“We shall see about that,” said the king.
He ordered her to be imprisoned in a small cell, where she languished for years. Meanwhile, the king and his obedient daughters spent freely of the wealth which otherwise would have been expended upon her.
The king said to himself, “This girl lies in a prison not by her own will, but by mine. This proves, sufficiently for any logical mind, that it is my will, not hers, which is determining her fate.”
The people of the country, hearing of their princess’s situation said to one another, “She must have said or done something very wrong for a monarch, with whom we find no fault, to treat his flesh and blood so.” For they had not arrived at the point where they felt the need to dispute the king’s assumption of rightness in everything.
From time to time the king visited the girl. Although she was pale and weakened from her imprisonment, she refused to change her attitude.
Finally the king’s patience came to an end. “Your continued defiance,” he said to her, “will only annoy me further, and seem to weaken my rights, if you stay within my realms. I could kill you; but I am merciful. I therefore banish you into the wilderness adjoining my territory. This is a wilderness, inhabited only by wild beasts and such eccentric outcasts who cannot survive in our rational society. There you will soon discover whether you can have an existence apart from that of your family; and, if you can, whether you prefer it to ours.”
His decree was at once obeyed, and she was conveyed to the borders of the kingdom. The princess found herself set loose in a wild land which bore little resemblance to the sheltered surroundings of her upbringing. But she soon learned that a cave would serve for a house, that nuts and fruits came from trees as well as golden plates, that warmth came from the Sun. This wilderness had a climate and way of existing on its own.
After some time she had so ordered her life that she had water from springs, vegetables from the earth, fire from a smoldering tree.
“Here,” she said to herself, “is a life whose elements belong together, form a completeness, yet neither individually nor collectively do they obey the commands of my father the king.”
DEAR SAGE: I really appreciate your inspirational posts…and I know that you don’t deal strictly with relationships, but I have a love question. I’m desperately seeking my Prince Charming and the fairy-tale marriage and children but it never seems to work out right! What do I need to do to get it right?! Please help. – Read More –
“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that – Read More –
There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small village. As he sat, he saw a fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” The – Read More –
This photo struck me very deeply. This Kenyan woman works as a trash picker and said that she wishes she had more time to look at the books she comes across. She said that she even likes reading the industrial parts catalogs because it gives her something to do during the day besides picking trash. – Read More –